SABOCA

Swedish-ESO PI receiver for APEX

The Submillimetre APEX Bolometer Camera (SABOCA) was a bolometric receiver installed on the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX), located at 5100 metres in altitude on Chile’s Chajnantor Plateau in the Atacama Desert. The pioneering APEX is the forerunner to the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, which operates at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths of light. These wavelengths are key for observing the cold Universe, including gas, dust and other objects that are just a few degrees above absolute zero (-273.15° C).

SABOCA observes wavelengths of around 350µm (similar to ALMA Band 10) with its 37 superconducting bolometers. Bolometers are highly sensitive instruments that detect incoming light by registering the resulting rise in temperature. They do not measure temperature in the same way that thermometers do, but rather they measure the energy of the light received from sources in the sky.

SABOCA is a versatile instrument that can observe a range of objects of great interest in the various different fields of today’s astrophysics: from our own Solar System to the debris discs around nearby young stars; from molecular clouds and star-forming regions in our Milky Way to cold dust in galaxies at various redshifts and evolutionary stages; all the way to the early epochs of the Universe, constraining the star formation rates in high-redshift starburst galaxies.

SABOCA was decommissioned in 2012.

SABOCA

The authoritative technical specifications as offered for astronomical observations are available from the Science Operation page.